Building Climate-Resilient Agriculture through Conservation Practices: Evidence from Sunamganj Wetland Ecosystem, Bangladesh

Climate change creates major obstacles that threaten both agricultural sustainability and food security in wetlands that are most at-risk in Bangladesh’s haor regions where smallholder farmers deal with constant flooding and soil erosion and decreasing crop yields. The research investigates how vermicompost-based conservation agriculture (CA) impacts soil health and carbon storage capacity and crop yield and ecosystem resilience in the haor region of Sunamganj District Bangladesh. A participatory action research framework was implemented to evaluate conservation agriculture (CA) and conventional farming methods on four crops which included amaranth, basella, grass pea, and mustard through a randomized complete block design that used three replications during the Rabi season from October 2025 to February 2026. The study used ANOVA to analyze soil physicochemical properties and crop morphological traits and biomass production together with climatic data from NASA POWER DAV. The results showed that CA plots contained more organic matter and better micronutrient accessibility and higher root biomass which reached 7.29 t ha⁻¹ and their carbon sequestration capacity reached 2,916 kg ha⁻¹ organic carbon. The CA-grown grass pea varieties achieved greater seed production with stable yields that reached 1.7 t ha⁻¹ while intercropping systems enhanced leaf area and biomass distribution which demonstrated better resource use and soil moisture conservation. However, mustard was discarded from recommendation due to the lack of survival capacity in that ecosystem. The research demonstrates that vermicompost-based conservation agriculture increases soil biodiversity while decreasing chemical dependence and improving climate resilience in wetland agroecosystems. The research presents a community-based agricultural transformation model which can be expanded to achieve sustainable farming practices in climate-vulnerable haor regions while providing evidence that agroecological methods create resilient food systems for South Asia.

Keywords: Vermicompost; Conservation agriculture; Haor wetlands; Soil health; Climate-resilient agriculture